When would you say,'this act is an exercise in futility?'?

Question

When would you say,'this act is an exercise in futility?'?

Answer 1

Which act?

It depends on the act, how hard it is to do and how important it is to you to complete the act.

Living is pretty important to most of us and we do tend to work pretty hard and pretty long at staying alive.

Trying to reach level 14 on a video game is usually not that important and most people try hard, but not to the exclusion of all else.  That is except for those who have died in the middle of playing a video game.  One South Korean took a 4 day weekend and didn’t eat or drink or sleep; he just played the game and peed in old soda bottle so he wouldn’t have to leave the game.  He didn’t survive the weekend.  Clearly reaching the high level wasn’t a futile act to him.  I don’t think he actually planned on dying that weekend to reach that high level, but that was the result.

How many times have you tried to shoot a free throw, and how many times have you tried to do it with your back turned to the hoop?  Sigourney Weaver spent all day trying it for the movie Alien 3.  Her character was supposed to be super powered and in the scene she had just beaten her fellow travelers at basketball.  At the end of the game the script called for her to leave the court and shoot a blind free throw and make it.  She was determined to do it and so spent an entire shooting day trying to.  Then the ball went out of the camera shot so that no one would believe she actually did it herself.  Because she was a big star no one wanted to tell her to stop.  In the end that was a pretty futile act because the movie tanked and everyone thought the shot was done with special effects anyway.

How many years have we been fighting for “peace”  WWI was billed as the “War to end all wars” yet WW2 was just an extension of that war and before WW2 was over the Cold War started.  The Cold War got hot in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, which for the Soviets was like Vietnam was for the Americans.  Yet we are still there today trying to fix the problems in the region; frankly, all those problems were ones left over by the poor settling of WW2, which happened because the settlement after WW1 wasn’t very good either.  Vietnam, Germany, and Korea were split in parts giving the allies control over part of it.  The Western allies gave their parts back to their people, but the Soviets refused.  One reason for the use of the Atomic Bomb on Japan was to get the war over before treaty forced the Soviets into the war, which would have resulted in a Japan that would be spilt in two.  Look how long it took for Eastern Europe to liberate itself from the Soviet Union.  That was never a futile act, it was a long, expensive and life consuming act that involved the lives of millions of people and dramatically changed them all.

When millions of lives are at stake or even thousands most people will go to any limits to save those people; except the Moslems.  The Shiites and Sunni started hating each other some time in the 7th century; they can’t even agree on when the hatred started.  They have not agreed on any kind of peace except when one sect rules or a strong dictator, like Saddam Hussein, brutally suppressed the population.  The current ethnic troubles are because despite the vast numbers of peoples involved the people themselves (or a powerful subset) don’t want peace.  The US is trying to change their minds and has met with some limited success, but it is tough going.  The Kurds in Northern Iraq are doing well and US troops hardly need to patrol the area and can do so in unarmored vehicles without wearing body armor because the mostly Kurdish people want peace.  Around the “Green Zone” the militants are insuring that peace will never happen.  Yet the goal of peace is one the US has committed herself to and it is an admirable one.  We are stuck with the job because when the rest of the word ignored the struggle, as most Islamic people claim to want us to do, the terrorists brought the war to the US, Britain and Spain.  Don’t say terrorism never changed anything it got them front page attention and it not only brought the Spanish government down, but it caused them to withdraw from the country.  Yet, if they stay out and let things go to pot there then it will only be a matter of time before they become victims of more terrorist attacks to try and get their attention.

Diplomacy happens when two groups have a disagreement that can’t be easily settled.  When diplomacy fails wars break out.  When one side is too weak to continue the war and has no chance of winning they can still fight through terrorism, by ignoring strong military targets and attacking the weak civilian ones.  They keep on fighting for their principles even when the cause is hopeless.

When I was in 6th grade I met this wall called Algebra and I couldn’t do word problems.  I finally had to plead to my father for his help.  So the literal rocket scientist (he worked at NASA) had to dumb himself down enough to teach his poor son the basics of doing world problems.  It was a hard fought battle and well worth it.  His training got me past algebra and on through math until I hit calculus and even though it took me 4 tries I finally passed calculus.  I needed that for my education and it was not a futile task.  Most people would have given up after 2-3 attempts, but I can give a mule lessons on how to be stubborn.  It was important for me to get through calculus to get the kind of career I wanted and so I stuck to it until I did.

I don’t play shoot-em-up video games; I am not very good at it and I don’t take the time or effort to become good at it.  I just don’t play them.  I have never picked up the controller of an X-Box and I only used a Playstation to play Tetris and a strategy game.  The goal of playing games like Doom, Half-Life etc. are ones that are not worth it for me.  Yet thousands of people have spent millions of hours perfecting their skills at it.  Oh, it is not because I am a horrible shot; I fired Expert in Basic Training.

Their was one game that my teacher made us play in school.  She gave the class a long list of options and one-million dollars to spend.  The 30 some odd people had to allocate their funds to get what they wanted knowing that only the one who allocated the most money to that goal would get it.  I surprised people by spending $50.000 on only two things; absolute control over the lives of 100 people and the use of a super computer (did I tell you I like strategy games).  I was willing to narrow my focus down to what I wanted most and ignored the rest.  It didn’t matter that no one else came anywhere close to what I was willing to spend, it only mattered that I won my goal.  The point of the game is to establish a goal and how many resources you are willing to devote to it.

I have over 31,000 points on Yahoo Answers and there are no more levels, no more prizes, my points are worthless even to brag about because so few people care.  But, here I am plugging away at it and still trying for the best answer.  For me the personal satisfaction I get from a well written essay and the chance to teach people is important enough to keep going on.  Of course I don’t spend as much time on it as I used to.

It all depends on how much you are willing to spend on your goal, what your goal is and what you are willing to endure to win that goal.  2-4 attempts are the usual standard for the usual task, but the important ones are far from usual and we try them time and time again.

Thomas Edison discovered over 100 ways not to make a light bulb; before he finally found a tungsten filament worked the best (actually platinum, but tungsten was cheaper and so affordable).  His work was trial and error, yet he ushered in an entirely new age.  Computers would have been impossible without the wide distribution of electricity and the Internet would have been impossible without the wide distribution of phone lines that existed to make them possible.  Those are due to the works of Alexander Bell and Thomas Edison.  Bell may not have won the final patent for the telephone, but he did the most to encourage its use and Bell Telephone still exists to this day as does Con Edison Power.

We hear stories of men who walked hundreds of miles and who won their way to the US and despite coming from a poor background with little to no education they became success stories.  Clearly, they were willing to spend a lot of themselves and their personal resources to come out ahead.  The success of the US is built on the backs of those kinds of people.

Today the migrant immigrants who brave the border crossing and work at jobs that most Americans would refuse to do are the heart of our service industry and they are making all the other work including the extremely important fact of cheap food possible.  They are willing to work hard and come to the US to do so because they know that there they can make their lives better for themselves and for their families.  These people are willing to spend a lot and the menial jobs are not futile for them; not if it gives their children a chance to go to college and get great jobs.  That is part of the American Dream and it is what built this country.  As long as remains so the US will be a world leader.  The task of becoming a success in life if often a great one as it says on the POW-MIA flag “Some gave, some gave all.”  How much are you willing to give to succeede?

What would have happened if Bell or Edison had gotten discouraged after 4 tries and quit?  Sure someone else would have eventually created their inventions, but the names of Edison and Bell would be forgotten and our technological level would be at least 25 years behind what it is today.  The next time you find a task that is too hard to do; figure out how much you are willing to commit to it, how much you are willing to endure, and how important it is for you to accomplish that task.  Then seek inspiration from those wh

Answer 2

when it is hopeless